A New Hub

Okay, so let me tell a quick story. I’m supposed to be putting the final touches on an editing project but I need a break because I’ve been staring at that thing all day. Anyway, here’s the deal. I’ve got certain aesthetic sensibilities that are easily offended. I like my commentaries shelved by series; my business cards clean and simple; my shoes lined up in a row starting with casual and moving toward formal (from left to right); etc. I wouldn’t say that I’m obsessive-compulsive about any of this stuff but I do like things a certain way.

So anyway, for months and months I’ve been staring at two Dell 24″ computer monitors hooked into my Macbook Pro. I love them; they’re essential for my workflow. I tried working away from home yesterday on just the laptop and it was a pain in the neck. Anyway, up until a few days ago I had the monitors raised a good bit. I can’t remember why I ever had them so high to begin with but I think it was a holdover from when I had the Macbook resting on a Rain Design mStand. If memory serves I had the bottom of the left Dell monitor matched up with the bottom of the Macbook monitor. Ah yes, that’s what it was.

Anyway, I had them up kinda high. I really had no issues with that. The viewing angle was good. But every time I looked down I saw all my cables behind the monitors. I had them all tied together neatly, but being able to see them irked me something awful. You can’t really see it in this picture because the iPad is hiding them, but they were there and the iPad wasn’t always.

This went on for months. Months I say! Anyway, I finally decided to lower the monitors so that I wouldn’t have to see what was happening behind them. Best move ever!

But I had another issue. This one technical, not aesthetic. The issue has to do with connecting external drives to the Macbook. I only have 256 GB of flash storage (or something like that) and that all goes pretty quickly when you’re using a lot of programs like I use. So external storage is a must. I have a couple of 1TB Seagate drives for my personal stuff and then another 1TB Western Digital drive for the things I need for church. Problem is that you can’t leave external drives plugged in indefinitely on this stinking computer! It was never an issue with my Toshiba. Never!

The problem is that once the computer goes to sleep it dismounts the drive. Then when you wake the computer up you get this annoying message saying that the drive was not properly ejected.

This then requires that you unplug the drive and plug it back in. Super annoying. Super I say! So I had the brilliant idea to purchase a powered USB hub (7 ports on the one I got) with individual switches. This way I can eject the drives safely and flip the switch. Then when I need them I flip the switch back on. No more plugging and unplugging. It was genius!

So the hub came in today and unfortunately I got a dud. Only 3 of 7 ports are working. The seller has already processed a replacement and I hope to have it by early next week. But getting this new hub also created some space for a bit of rearranging behind the monitors. Now the cables that I had feeding through the monitor stand to the front of the desk for the hard drives are secured behind the monitors. The drives are also back there. So now I can’t see any of that. The only thing I can see if the hub, which I can easily access but it isn’t in the way by any means, and the two wires coming out of it (but they’re quite low profile).